Coinciding with the judicial investigator in the Beirut port explosion case, Judge Tariq Bitar, resume of his investigations into the file, and setting new dates for the interrogation of political, military and civilian defendants, new signs of the war against him emerged, through a lawsuit filed this morning by the father of one of the Beirut port explosion victims, Youssef Al-Mawla. , who, through his attorney, Salman Barakat, filed a lawsuit against Bitar before the Criminal Court of Cassation, in which he requested that the investigation file be transferred from him to another judge due to “legitimate suspicion,” claiming that the judicial investigator “caused delaying in the investigation, due to the discretion he is following, by summoning some and turning a blind eye to others, which hinders the judicial investigation.”
On the other hand, Judge Tariq Bitar returned to the Discriminatory Public Prosecution the arrest warrant issued in absentia against MP Ali Hassan Khalil, and ordered its immediate implementation by the security services.
This step comes after the Director-General of the Internal Security Forces, Major General Imad Othman, refused to implement this memorandum weeks ago, based on the text of Article 40 of the Constitution, which prohibits the prosecution or arrest of a deputy during the regular session of Parliament, except in the case of flagrante delicto. A judicial source confirmed that “Bitar’s decision that this memorandum should be circulated to the security services and that it must be implemented immediately came after the resumption of his work, especially since Major General Othman’s response, refusing to implement it, was received by Bitar’s office on the same day that the latter stopped investigating as a result of the response lawsuits that were submitted against him.” The judicial source stressed that “the failure of a security apparatus to implement a judicial warrant is a dangerous precedent, and a rebellion against the decisions of the judicial authority.”